What happened to Jordan Peterson? He was once a pretty respected figure, and today he's considered much more of a joke.
Some think he just got destroyed by fame.
I think it's also the fact that he went from a guy who could spend a long time figuring out the truth to a guy who needed to put on his show every week or whatever.
It's like "Say something" important at some point in your life -- ok, you probably can. Now "say something" every week. Say something every time someone asks, and people are always asking. And your continued success relies on it.
My first book came out in 2021. I didn't have much else to say until this year, I banged out one book and I've got another on the way. But what if I needed to write a new book every year? if I needed to fill an hour-long show every week? If I had to do that I'd definitely be churning out worse work, and I've got an IQ of 79 on the best of days.
And the other thing is, having to say things about current events all the time! My work is trying to imagine 100 years from now, so if people keep asking me about the latest Trump cabinet pick or the news from last week, of course I'd end up another brainrotted commentator.
Plus, one of the logical fallacies is the bento box fallacy -- If you want the calamari sushi, you need to buy the box that includes the fried egg sushi even if you don't like fried egg, and you need to accept the tempura and the seeweed salad, even if you only really care for the calamari sushi. The problem is that once you start accepting money from somewhere like Daily Wire, you've bought the whole bento box. You need to comment on climate change and trans issues and a bunch of other things and you're basically expected to fit your commentary within the bento box. He was able to "win" in the argument with Kathy Newman because she was engaging in the bento box against someone with a nuanced opinion. Today, he has to have a fairly simple opinion because large elements of his new audience doesn't want nuance, they want the whole bento box.
Peterson's "Christianity" is another victim of this. He originally had a nuanced and non-mainstream opinion of Christianity as mythic technology that regardless of the empirical existence or non-existence of God, was a proven powerful thing that could help individuals and groups thrive. The problem is that he's stuck between two groups who don't want that kind of nuance: The atheists want him to pick "God doesn't exist and religion is bullshit", the Christians wanted him to pick "God Exists in the way we specifically say today and everything in Christianity is perfectly true".
He wants to get back into that nuance, but he hasn't put in the legwork because he's too busy being a media personality, so you get the "it depends what you mean by believe in and god", because you can believe in something you know isn't empirically real -- people believe in love, in hate, in the nation, in the people, but all those things are abstractions that don't strictly exist empirically and measurably. And "God" in the sense that you can see God as a literal dude in the sky, or as a mythic construction that is real in a premodern sense, but can't be measured or quantified in a modern sense.
The smartest thing for him is something I doubt he has the strength to do: Finish up whatever his obligations are under the daily wire contract, then take his giant stack of money and go into reclusion for a few years. Get off of Twitter, off of youtube, and hit the books. Brush up on his Nietzsche and his Dostoyevsky, and spend some time rebuilding. Maybe spend some time trying to get his daughter off the course she's on and back on the track to virtue before the same forces chew her up and spit her out. He's interviewed some of the foremost thinkers of today, so potentially he's got a lot of interesting new material to consider, but he's not the sort who can flip like that on the fly. He'd need a lot of time not sitting in interviews or posting on Twitter or giving speeches to sort and integrate and utilize it.
Some think he just got destroyed by fame.
I think it's also the fact that he went from a guy who could spend a long time figuring out the truth to a guy who needed to put on his show every week or whatever.
It's like "Say something" important at some point in your life -- ok, you probably can. Now "say something" every week. Say something every time someone asks, and people are always asking. And your continued success relies on it.
My first book came out in 2021. I didn't have much else to say until this year, I banged out one book and I've got another on the way. But what if I needed to write a new book every year? if I needed to fill an hour-long show every week? If I had to do that I'd definitely be churning out worse work, and I've got an IQ of 79 on the best of days.
And the other thing is, having to say things about current events all the time! My work is trying to imagine 100 years from now, so if people keep asking me about the latest Trump cabinet pick or the news from last week, of course I'd end up another brainrotted commentator.
Plus, one of the logical fallacies is the bento box fallacy -- If you want the calamari sushi, you need to buy the box that includes the fried egg sushi even if you don't like fried egg, and you need to accept the tempura and the seeweed salad, even if you only really care for the calamari sushi. The problem is that once you start accepting money from somewhere like Daily Wire, you've bought the whole bento box. You need to comment on climate change and trans issues and a bunch of other things and you're basically expected to fit your commentary within the bento box. He was able to "win" in the argument with Kathy Newman because she was engaging in the bento box against someone with a nuanced opinion. Today, he has to have a fairly simple opinion because large elements of his new audience doesn't want nuance, they want the whole bento box.
Peterson's "Christianity" is another victim of this. He originally had a nuanced and non-mainstream opinion of Christianity as mythic technology that regardless of the empirical existence or non-existence of God, was a proven powerful thing that could help individuals and groups thrive. The problem is that he's stuck between two groups who don't want that kind of nuance: The atheists want him to pick "God doesn't exist and religion is bullshit", the Christians wanted him to pick "God Exists in the way we specifically say today and everything in Christianity is perfectly true".
He wants to get back into that nuance, but he hasn't put in the legwork because he's too busy being a media personality, so you get the "it depends what you mean by believe in and god", because you can believe in something you know isn't empirically real -- people believe in love, in hate, in the nation, in the people, but all those things are abstractions that don't strictly exist empirically and measurably. And "God" in the sense that you can see God as a literal dude in the sky, or as a mythic construction that is real in a premodern sense, but can't be measured or quantified in a modern sense.
The smartest thing for him is something I doubt he has the strength to do: Finish up whatever his obligations are under the daily wire contract, then take his giant stack of money and go into reclusion for a few years. Get off of Twitter, off of youtube, and hit the books. Brush up on his Nietzsche and his Dostoyevsky, and spend some time rebuilding. Maybe spend some time trying to get his daughter off the course she's on and back on the track to virtue before the same forces chew her up and spit her out. He's interviewed some of the foremost thinkers of today, so potentially he's got a lot of interesting new material to consider, but he's not the sort who can flip like that on the fly. He'd need a lot of time not sitting in interviews or posting on Twitter or giving speeches to sort and integrate and utilize it.
- replies
- 1
- announces
- 0
- likes
- 4
@sj_zero
I respected his willingness to put his career on the line to defend free speech in relation to Canada's Bill C-16, and occasionally for giving the feminazis a good schooling in rhetoric and statistics. It turned the cultural tide in an important way.
But beyond that I think he's a bit of an ass-clown, especially when lionising Christinanity as the epitome of western civilisation. For one thing his notion of "God" has nothing to do with Christinanity, but is essentially a synonym for the Jungian superego. Secondly he seems pretty ignorant of history in that regard considering that it's taken almost 2,000 years to get society back to the state of intellectual progress which Christinanity wholesale destroyed upon it's uprise. We're seemingly about to repeat that mistake, in large part thanks to disingenuous proselytising like his and other such pop-culture social media influencers.
I respected his willingness to put his career on the line to defend free speech in relation to Canada's Bill C-16, and occasionally for giving the feminazis a good schooling in rhetoric and statistics. It turned the cultural tide in an important way.
But beyond that I think he's a bit of an ass-clown, especially when lionising Christinanity as the epitome of western civilisation. For one thing his notion of "God" has nothing to do with Christinanity, but is essentially a synonym for the Jungian superego. Secondly he seems pretty ignorant of history in that regard considering that it's taken almost 2,000 years to get society back to the state of intellectual progress which Christinanity wholesale destroyed upon it's uprise. We're seemingly about to repeat that mistake, in large part thanks to disingenuous proselytising like his and other such pop-culture social media influencers.